Lasner was almost finished with the police. Once the ID had been made there was little either of them could do except arrange for the car to be towed. He looked again at the road. No skid marks, the policeman had said, but you didn’t need to slam on the brakes to have an accident here. Another car, with its lights in your eyes. The inky darkness of the canyon beyond, making the guard rail hard to see. The slide effect of wet pavement. There were lots of ways it could have happened, all of them easy to believe, unless you had sat with her at dinner and seen her eyes.
Still, why this road? The next turnoff would have taken her up over the coast highway itself, a more dramatic plunge off the cliff into the traffic, a spectacular end. But the etiquette of suicide could be peculiar, oddly discreet. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to make a point, just go quietly, no trouble to anyone.
“Who found her?” Ben said suddenly to the cop. They had pulled the sheet back over her face. “I mean, anybody see it happen? Stop?”
“No. Some kids. See the shoulder over there? It’s a view point, daytime anyway. Sometimes they park there-it’s away from the houses. Nights you don’t get many cars, so it’s-anyway, they’re there, going at it, and when they leave they spot the fence. They take a look and there’s the car, her in it. So they call it in.”
“This was when?”
“Hour ago, maybe. Couldn’t have been too long after she went over. No rigor. Tire marks still fresh. Must have been a quickie.” He caught Ben’s look. “The kids, I mean.”
“Nobody heard the crash?”
“Nobody said. Pretty quiet up here. She’d have the place to herself. Till morning anyway. Then you get the dog walkers.” Hours later, not an instant attraction on the highway. “It’s just lucky it didn’t burn. A few weeks ago, all you’d need is one spark and- woof. ”
But she would burn now, finally the ashes the Germans had wanted. Unless Sol decided to have her buried. He looked over to where Lasner was standing, a little lost. He was avoiding the stretcher, still shaken. But Sol had scarcely known her. It occurred to Ben that their talk at dinner may have been the only real connection she’d made in California, that he had known her better than anyone. Not buried. She’d want to go up in smoke, erasing herself.
Another car had pulled up, with a noisy greeting to the police photographer. Kelly. Ben, not yet seen, went quickly over to Lasner.
“Get in the car,” he said.
“What?”
“Now. Don’t let him see you, the guy over there-he’s press. If he thinks there’s a studio connection, he’ll do a story. You don’t need that.”
“You’re looking after me now?” he said.
“I know him, I’ll take care of it. Just don’t let him see you. He’ll recognize you. Not her.”
“Another Bunny,” Lasner said, but moved to the car, his face turned away.
Kelly was already at the stretcher with the cop.
“Hey, Kelly,” Ben said. “Chasing ambulances?”
“Hey,” Kelly said, surprised to see him. “It’s a living.” He nodded to the stretcher. “More trouble in the family?”
“Just visiting down the street. We heard the sirens.”
“Visiting,” Kelly said, taking in the neighborhood, an open question.
“If you need to call you could use their phone.”
Kelly turned back to the cop. “Who is it? Anybody?”
The cop passed over a clipboard. “Here,” he said, “I can’t even pronounce it. Copy it if you want. Polish or something. Slid in the rain and went through the fence.”
Ben looked nervously at the form on the clipboard. They’d have the Summit Drive address, a Crestview phone exchange, easy for Kelly to spot. But Kelly didn’t bother to look.
“Polish,” he said, a code for no story. “Anybody else hurt?”
“If so, they took off. Just her.” He lifted the sheet off her face.
“Christ, she did a job on herself, didn’t she? What’s with the head, in the back? You get banged up there, you’re the driver?”
The cop nodded to the cars. “Take one and find out. I’ll give you a push.”
“I’m just saying. A wound like that, it’s consistent with a crash?”
“Kelly, for chrissake, anything’s consistent with a crash. You know that.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s always got to be something,” he said, taking the clipboard away. “It’s not enough she’s dead. She’s got to be somebody dead.” Ben waited for him to mention Lasner, but evidently the name hadn’t meant anything to him. “If it was Lana Turner, I’d be on the phone to you.”
“If it was Lana, you’d be fucking the corpse. I wouldn’t put it past you.”
“Nice. And all those years in school. You going to write this up or what?”
“A Polack goes in the ditch? My Pulitzer.” He turned back to Ben. “Funny seeing you here.”
“Friend lives down there,” Ben said, cocking his head toward the houses. “Another refugee.”
“Some refugee. You know what these go for?”
“I guess he got his money out.” Ben moved slightly to the left, blocking Kelly’s view of his car.
“I was going to call you.”
“Yes?” Ben said, alarmed. Now what? A new scent? Maybe not just some gossip this time. Now there were worse secrets, the kind that could spread like a stain, touching other people. Things he wouldn’t want Kelly to overhear at Lucey’s.
“Get anywhere with the loan-outs?”
Ben shook his head. “I thought you were giving up on it.”
“Yeah,” said Kelly. “Too bad, though. You hate to leave it, there’s a studio angle. Sometimes it’s like this with a story. It goes and then it comes back. Never close a door.” He held up a finger and smiled. “You know where I got that? Partners in Crime. Remember how Frank always said that?”
Otto’s pet phrase. After he started working for Goebbels.
“Which one were you?” Kelly said. “The younger one?”
“Neither. It’s a movie.”
Kelly nodded, unconvinced. “Well, you hear anything, you know where to reach me.”
“You’re the first call.”
He put the car in a U-turn away from the accident and started back down the hill.
“What was that all about? He’s going to write this up?” Lasner said.
“The only story was, she was related to you, so there’s no story.”
“You forgot to mention it, huh?”
“Mrs. Lasner doesn’t need to see this in the papers. I know what it’s like.”
Lasner looked over at him. “You’re a piece of work. You’re here, what, five minutes? And already you know guys on the paper. Not to mention the goddam Palisades.” They were passing Feuchtwanger’s house, dark now. “Thanks for this,” Lasner said, serious. He was quiet for a minute as they turned onto Sunset, heading back. “It’s a hell of a life, when you think about it. Hiding like an animal. The camp. Now this. To do something like this.”
“There was nothing you could have done,” Ben said quietly.
“I don’t know.”
“What she went through, it breaks something. You can’t fix it. Not just like that.”
“What did she say to you? At dinner. She talk about it?”
“No,” Ben said, avoiding it. “She was sad, Sol. Nothing was going to change that.”
“You give her all this,” Lasner said, glancing out the window, brooding. “You know the best thing that ever happened to me? Getting the hell out. Everybody should have got out. Even now, you want to kiss the ground here. What kind of life could you have there? This country-”
He broke off, as if the thought had overwhelmed him. Ben followed his gaze out the side window, trying to see what he was seeing, the big, sleepy houses and palms and hedges of paradise.
“She asks, tell Fay it was an accident.”
But he didn’t have to say anything. When they pulled into the driveway Fay came running out of the house, and Ben could tell from her face that calls had been made and nothing needed to be explained. Behind her, like a shadow, Bunny stood in the doorway, evidently summoned to wait with her. She hugged Lasner, then put her hands on his chest, smoothing his jacket, a hovering gesture.